Right. Sure. Guaranteed pay is good to help people during hard times, I totally get and agree with that and I agree with you.
But please read the second paragraph of my original post. I suggest Guaranteed government WORK as a better alternative to Guaranteed PAY. Freeloading may be a small sacrifice that is the result of base income, BUT freeloading is virtually non existent if you change base income to guaranteed public work.
The unemployed can be set to work on community projects that benefit the entire economy. The hoover dam was built using this technique during the great depression.
I'm afraid most of those jobs made up by the government to increase the employment rate are useless jobs. And useless jobs are worse than freeloaders.
BTW, that's what they did in communist Romania: everybody had a job, but most of the jobs where bullshit. There was even a saying: we pretend to work, they pretend to pay us.
We don't need to dig holes and then fill them in order to survive. We need food, water, shelter, medical care and so on. The sooner we get past the mindset that any work, no matter how useless to the society, entitles us to have what we need, the sooner we stop wasting our resources.
Why are useless jobs worse then freeloaders? They are the same to me. In the worst case the jobs are useless, the best case, they are useful. In all cases it is better than or equal to just giving them money.
Useless jobs waste human capital, natural resources and tend to be a net negative for the society by wasting everybody's time and money. See how bureaucratic structures appear when useless employees have to justify their existence and try to gain a social position by becoming road blocks.
We'd really be better off without useless jobs. And the people doing them would have a chance to do something better with their time.
Human capital is also wasted when no one is working. It's one and the same thing. You're just arguing for the fact that making people work ends up wasting more capital than just giving them money for free. AKA administrative overhead is what you're complaining about. You realize that distributing this money will also yield administrative overhead?
As for natural resources, I believe centralized planning can often yield better allocation of natural resources then the free market. See the internet, national freeway system, and the hoover dam.
No, it's not just the administrative overhead. You're forgetting volunteering. Some of these people freed from their bullshit jobs will volunteer for whatever they deem important or interesting. That's a better use of human capital.
When I talk about wasting natural resources I'm thinking about electricity for the office/plant, fuel for the commute, etc. Pretend-work is not without costs.
Volunteering is a weak argument. Generally people with free money and free time don't go to volunteering gigs. They go on vacation.
>When I talk about wasting natural resources I'm thinking about electricity for the office/plant, fuel for the commute, etc. Pretend-work is not without costs.
"Pretend-work" isn't an emergent flaw that arises out of putting people to work. You're describing bad management, which is a different sort of problem.
Secondly, if you think "pretend-work" is the result of an oversupply of workers, I have to say that there are plenty of potential public projects in the United States that are targets human capital can be direct towards. The demand far exceeds the supply. Our country has the most inefficient urban infrastructure in the first world, so you can imagine how much can be done.
Also note that there doesn't need to be demand in order for a public project to be filled. Before the internet was created there was virtually no demand for it. Public works projects can be directed towards ideas that improve society in general even if demand is nonexistent.
But please read the second paragraph of my original post. I suggest Guaranteed government WORK as a better alternative to Guaranteed PAY. Freeloading may be a small sacrifice that is the result of base income, BUT freeloading is virtually non existent if you change base income to guaranteed public work.
The unemployed can be set to work on community projects that benefit the entire economy. The hoover dam was built using this technique during the great depression.